


Prompt: A River of Scarlet and Metal

by EssayOfThoughts



Series: MCU Maximoff Oneshots [149]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Riverdale (TV 2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Riverdale, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Codependency, F/M, Gen, Magic, Nods to comics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-03-01 08:43:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13291269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: Crystal shoves the car into gear, skids away down the road. If Pietro gets out, makes it to the road, he knows the next rendezvous point. He never forgets, not a thing. He’ll find her, he’ll find her, he’llfind her,and Crystal’s hand rubs the pendant at her neck, twin to the one tied around Pietro’s wrist in desperate reassurance.He’ll find her. He has to.





	Prompt: A River of Scarlet and Metal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nanyoky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nanyoky/gifts).



> For Nanyoky, a Riverdale AU for the Maximoff twins with the Maximoffs as the Blossoms. A few notes: Suzanna, Lorna's mother, is the twins stepmother despite all the stuff in the comics for reasons of: I don't care. Maybe she divorced her husband (she cheated on him in comics so I don't see why not) and married Erik. Maybe she never married her comics-husband in this AU. Who knows. She's the twins stepmum, and she's lovely and she gave them Lorna, so they love her. NICE STEPMUMS. 
> 
> Other things: I played with storytelling methods here. This was written for a prompt on my tumblr, which you can read [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/private/166473254960/tumblr_oxxjr2nVuu1r2ux5w). Hmm. That's it I think. Have fun!

 

 **i.**  
When you wish to escape from a father who's alias is "Magneto" one needs several things. 

Speed. 

Luck.

A dearth of metal.

 

* * *

 

 **1.**  
“He’s  _gone!”_  Wanda screams when stepmother and father finally join her at the edge of the river. Professor Xavier’s students - the ones who found her, soaked and sodden - are speaking to the police, and Wanda clutches her stepmother close and  _cries._  “I can’t feel him any more,” she whispers between hiccups and sobs, into her stepmother’s neck. “I can’t-”

“Shh,” Suzanna says softly. “Come along now.”

Her father stared at the water with a raised brow.

 

* * *

 

 **ii.**  
The plan was simple. Have Wanda’s magic destroy the (wooden) boat, at the rapids. Pretend this was an accident. Use magic to get them to safety and let Pietro leave to find Crystal.

Wanda would remain, and claim him dead and gone, beyond the reach of her senses and their ever-linked minds. And once Pietro and Crystal and the child were safe, Wanda would join them, sealing and shielding the way with scarlet magic.

But no plan falls out unhindered.

 

* * *

 

 **2.**  
Wanda curls on her bed, draped in her dressing gown. Her hair, still damp from the river, snakes down her neck, clinging to her skin. She tries not to shiver and can’t. Steelwater River was breathtakingly cold and only Pietro’s lightning speed had saved her from drowning from shock, had bouyed her up long enough to get them safe to shore.

She tries not to reach for her brother’s mind and manages only by dint of knowing what will happen if she does.

Lorna, small and green-haired, eyes bright and wide as she stands in the doorway, watches. “Wanda,” she whispers. “Is it true?”

 

* * *

 

 **iii.**  
Crystal was already in the car. She wasn’t foolish. Wait by the woods? No. Start extra early to get to the car and meet Pietro in it? Yes. The boat had no metal, not even a filing. It was made of wood, carved by Pietro, held together by Wanda’s spells and supposed to be resistant to her bouts of uncontrolled magic. Wanda would purposefully lose her jewellery in the river, and only summon it back when she was safe ashore and far from Pietro. Pietro would pick clothes with no zips, no metal buttons. No trace by which their father might know their deception.

And there were always plenty of cars.

She rubbed her thumb on the pendant Wanda had given her when she and Pietro had shared their news. Looked out over the woods.

Then, the screams started.

 

* * *

 

 **3.**  
They trawl the river, and find nothing. Father trawls the river, and finds Wanda’s jewellery.

Wanda trawls the river with all her scarlet magic, and turns up shards of the once-enchanted boat.

“Wanda,” her father chides her. “What did I tell you? Use one of the boats I made. They’re there for you, your magic-”

“Would have torn through them,” she whispers. Even these days from what happened she has not spoken more than a whisper but to scream, has not met anyone’s eyes without tears. “The boat was supposed to be  _safe._  Agatha helped me enchant it, it shouldn’t have-”

Suzanna looks at her husband, hand still gentle on Wanda’s shoulder. “What if something set her magic off, something by the river?” she asks, turning to Erik. “Every time before when her magic lashed out, something bad happened, what if-”

“This time,” says Father, “I think that  _was_  the bad thing that happened.”

Wanda had always wondered how Pietro felt when father so calmly placed all the blame at his feet. She had not expected to learn it without him  _there._

 

* * *

 

 **iv.**  
Crystal shoves the car into gear, skids away down the road. If Pietro gets out, makes it to the road, he knows the next rendezvous point. He never forgets, not a thing. He’ll find her, he’ll find her, he’ll  _find her,_  and Crystal’s hand rubs the pendant at her neck, twin to the one tied around Pietro’s wrist in desperate reassurance.

He’ll find her. He has to.

Even though she knows, without a doubt, that those screams were his.

 

* * *

 

 **4.**  
It is hard for Wanda to keep from reaching out - to her brother’s mind, to try to find the pendants she’d enchanted and given to him and to Crystal. In her sleep... in her sleep her mind had long been bound to Pietro’s, to stave off the nightmares they shared.

To sleep each night without her brother’s mind near sends her more and more often to sleep in his cold and empty bed.

 

* * *

 

 **v.**  
Crystal waits a day. She waits a week. She waits almost a month. She presses a hand to her belly, where, yet unseen, her and Pietro’s child grows. 

Finally she admits the truth, and reaches for her phone.

 

* * *

 

 **5.**  
“Yes,” Wanda says. “Yes, I understand.” A tear falls, a sob is swallowed. “Thank you.” 

And she reaches scarlet fingers out, wide and grasping.

 

* * *

 

 **vi.**  
The phone is set down. The door remains locked. Crystal could summon Lockjaw if she cared to, but she doesn’t, not right now. She curls on her side, switches on the TV, and waits.

 

* * *

 

 **6.**  
Wanda’s eyes are bright and glowing scarlet, her magic pouring from her hands, from her every pore like water or smoke, like fire or blood. She hovers a full foot from the ground as she makes her way downstairs. 

“Father,” she says, and Lorna skitters back and hides, Suzanna covers her mouth to stifle a scream.

The last time Wanda had done this, she’d been possessed.

“Father  _what have you **done?”**_

 

* * *

 

 **vii.**  
The news doesn’t change. The news doesn’t change. The news-

 

* * *

 

 **7.**  
The body is carried out of the bunker by Wanda’s scarlet, concrete rubble and metal doors moved by the same, torn wrecks of other doors nothing beneath her dangling feet as she flies. The medics that had come in a screaming ambulance for Erik (comatose, stable, seemingly uninjured) redirect to the more immediate case.

Pietro Maximoff. Malnutrition, broken femur, shattered tibia, metal pins in his patellas having turned them to so much broken calcium.

Alive.

 

* * *

 

 **viii.**  
Crystal wraps Pietro in a hug as soon as Wanda waves her in. He’s a little bruised, the doctors say, and needs careful meals but he’ll mend fine, what with speed enhanced regen, and the nigh-magical abilities of mutant-trainee nurse Elixir on hand.

“What-?” asks Crystal.

“Father,” says Wanda.

 

* * *

 

 **8.**  
In another room another telepath sits with another patient.

“Oh Erik,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “What did I tell you about children?”

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments!


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